Cahoonshee keenly felt the degradation of his people. The education he had received in Europe had swept from his mind the Indian superstitions that were cherished and practiced by his fathers. He believed that all European nations were combined to drive the Indian from the forest and appropriate the land to themselves. Yet he held to the religion of his fathers, really seeing no difference between the white man’s God and the Indian’s Great Spirit. He believed in a first cause. This cause began to operate at the beginning of time. That time began when matter began to move. He believed that this first cause was an intelligent cause. He ignored nothingness—or rather claimed that there was no such thing as nothing. He rejected the common term of Spirit, and advocated that a Spirit was an actual entity, although as invisible as air or gas. That this Spirit, this entity was substance, although it could neither be seen, heard or felt. That this entity possessed certain attributes, among which were power, plan and design.
The reader will perceive that such a man, with such a mind, having the exalted views of Cahoonshee, would not feel at home with either white man or Indian. He was ahead of the age, and saw in the dim future the extinction of his race. His tribe was already extinct except himself. He believed that the merciless white would continue to drive the powerless Indian west, until the bones of his race would bleach on the western slope, and be washed by the Pacific.
It was for these reasons that he wished to return to the scenes of his childhood, and spend the rest of his days in comparative solitude.
Yet he had one idea, and that idea was to acquire and impart knowledge. But the world was not prepared to listen to such depth of thought.
He resolved at death to leave one pupil behind. That pupil should be a white man. That man should be Charles Drake. That he had succeeded, in a measure, is evident from the conversation Drake and Tom had at the Lifting Rocks, as narrated in Chapter III. His mode of instruction was in the true Indian style.
A few evenings after Cahoonshee had taken up his quarters in his cabin on the Steynekill, he and Drake were sitting together, when the moon began to light up the eastern sky. Drake watched it intently until the full moon arose above the horizon.
Cahoonshee, he said, you say that the sun is a burning mass, a liquid flame, and that it is the heat from this mass that warms the earth. Is that beautiful moon also a mass of fire?
It is supposed not, replied Cahoonshee. We derive but little heat from the moon. It has cooled off, and it is only the reflection of the sun on that planet that makes it appear so bright to us.
You say that it has cooled off. What do you mean by that? Was it once like the sun, a blaze of fire?